Conferences /

IGMPR to present at AIPH Expo Conference

On 16 March 2021, our founder Mr. Ibo Gülsen will be presenting during the AIPH Expo Conference. Creating compelling storylines and themes are a necessity to activate and attract visitors to any leisure destination including Expos. Based on his experience in the international flower and garden tourism industry, Mr Gülsen will highlight how (Flower) Culture can enhance the visitor experience of horticultural expo’s and attract hundreds of thousands of visitors and more.

Update: our presentation can be viewed here.

General /

Happy Holidays!

As 2020 is coming to an end, we will remember it as a year of extremes. While our core markets (Flowers and Tourism) where heavily affected by the pandemic, we were fortunate to continue to work on key-projects and clients and managed to implement the world’s largest off-season tulip show in Shanghai last October, against all seasons and odds. A small project with a big impact was the Return of The Istanbul Tulip, last May. The operations in the Dafeng Holland Flower Park, recommenced already in March and has seen great visitation numbers since then.

Also exciting new projects in the USA, China and Italy came through, where we are working on at the moment. We look forward sharing the results with you coming Spring.

In between we completed a number of feasibility studies and masterplans for clients related to garden and flower tourism and retail, and celebrated the 5th working anniversary of our colleague Zao Ye, who also made a great contribution to the International Autonomous Greenhouse Challenge.

We were glad to connect with our audiences and share our passion for flowers, gardens and tourism in different conferences and media.

We certainly miss meeting you less frequent in person, this year, but thanks to our local colleague Yi Yin and a wide range of video conference tools we managed to stay close from a distance.

We would like to thank our clients and partners for the pleasant and continued cooperation and we wish you and your loved ones a happy and healthy new year!

Team IGMPR

Flower Bulbs, Horticulture, Projects /

The World’s Largest Off-Season Tulip Show

During the October National Holiday Season, Oriental International Shanghai Floriculture Industry Development ltd (‘OISF’), launched the world’s largest off-season tulip festival in Miao Village on Chongming Island, Shanghai. Close to 1.8 million tulips were forced exactly into bloom for China’s most important holiday season, which lasts from 1 to 8 October.

Preparations for this big event already started last year, with the production and sourcing planning from different partners and suppliers in China, Netherlands and New Zealand. “We had to find solutions against all seasons and odds” says Ms Coco Yang, general manager of OISF. In the climate in Shanghai, with its hot and humid summers, it is impossible to plant tulip bulbs in the open landscape. The bulbs need a cool dormancy period of 3 to 4 months to develop a strong root bases and high-quality flowers. With the support of local and overseas partners we managed to import 1.8 million tulip bulbs from New Zealand and plant them on pots in June and store them in cooling rooms until mid-September. During 10 days about 50 trucks arrived at Chongming Island with the pre-rooted tulips from different locations across China. There over 400 workers planted the tulips into the landscape of the beautiful Zhongzhong Forest in Miao Town.

IGMPR has been supporting OISF in this project from the very beginning in the planning, sourcing, quality control and project management. ‘The use of pre-rooted tulips, allows tulip gardens and festivals to exactly time the blossom moment and extend the operation period. This is the first time ever, it has been done on such a massive scale, and we were honored and proud to work on this project since last year, says project lead Ibo Gülsen. Despite the world-wide pandemic and challenges in supply chains and travel restrictions, we managed to stay on track and achieve a magnificent result, thanks to OISF and all partners that were involved.”

Although visitation is capped at 1.000 visitors at any moment in the park due to COVID-19 regulations, over 5.000 visitors visit the show on a daily basis, with peaks of even 10.000. The show is also a warm-up for the coming 10th edition of the China Flower Expo which will be held on Chongming Island from May 21- July 2 in 2021.

For this accomplishment the chairman of the World Tulip Society, Mr Michel Gauthier, presented via a video message the award for the ‘World’s Largest Off Season Tulip Show’: “This project has proven again that the tulip is truly an international flower that can bring pleasure and joy to people at any time and place in the world”.